geo/cambodia
Washington D.C, May 20, 2024 – Amret Microfinance Institution, a Cambodia leading microfinance institution and one of the top 10 financial institutions in the country has joined the SME Finance Forum as the global membership network’s latest member. The 300+ members/affiliates of the Forum are SME financing experts operating in 190 countries who share the common goal of expanding access to finance to small businesses worldwide through knowledge exchange and innovation.
“SME Finance Forum proudly welcomes leading microfinance institution for MSMEs in Cambodia to our network. It is with great pleasure I welcome Amret to SME Finance Forum which is in line with our strategy of onboarding leading MSME lending institution in emerging markets for impact,” said Qamar Saleem, Head of SME Finance Forum.
Amret is a leading microfinance institution and one of the top 10 financial institutions in Cambodia. A full subsidiary of the Advans Group, a leading international microfinance group, Amret has prestigious international shareholders and respected national and international reputations as a responsible and innovative institution. Throughout its evolution, Amret has stayed true to its mission - to provide underserved clients with financial services tailored to their needs.
“SME Finance Forum is a place where we could access various data source and get up-to-date information of current economy and fin-tech. Furthermore, as a financial institution we foresee that we could build up more network, get new business partnership, and lift up our brand image,” said Mr. Dos Dinn, CEO of Amret Microfinance Institution.
SME Finance Forum: Innovation & Partnership for MSMEs Growth
The SME Finance Forum, set up by G20 and managed by IFC, is the leading global network of 300+ members/affiliates operating in 190 countries. Network comprises of SME focused institutions providing and enabling finance and services- banks, non-banks financial institutions, fintech, payment platforms, development institutions, credit guarantee companies, insurers, investment funds, supply chain linked players, banking and SME associations, policy advocates, regulators, academia, consulting houses, knowledge aggregators.
Our member, affiliates, and associated stakeholders benefit from learning/replicating best practices from across the world, innovating new products for business growth, acquiring risk mitigation tools, establishing partnerships, attracting investors, and being recognized amongst a peer group of global innovators. Our products consist of “members only” solutions (like innovation hubs, solutions clinics, peer group networks, study tours, specialized tools and trainings, member portal repository, partnered initiatives) as well as public good services (200+ publications library, 500+ videos, webinars, newsletters, trainings, annual awards, annual event etc.)
Discover the SME Finance Forum members/affiliates:
https://www.smefinanceforum.org/members/member-list
https://smefinanceforum.org/about/partners
About Amret Microfinance Institution
Amret is one of the top 10 financial institutions in Cambodia with impact. Amret serves more than 600,000 clients ranging from low- income farmers to SMEs for both lending and deposit products. Amret has 150 branches in 24 cities and provinces nationwide employing more than 4,700 personnel. Amret has assets to almost USD 2 billion and deposits exceeding nearly to USD 1 billion. Amret is a subsidiary of the Advans Group, a leading international microfinance group providing financial services to low-income segments and SMEs that are underserved or unbanked. FMO and IFC are two other shareholders.
Learn more:
Website: https://www.amret.com.kh/
Telegram: https://t.me/AmretMFI
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amretmfikh
Twitter: https://www.youtube.com/@amretmfi8179
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/amret/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amret.mfi?igsh=MXhmNjhkNWZmMGN1aw==
Washington DC, September 29 2022 - The future of delivering inclusive and effective banking support for the world’s small and medium sized enterprises will be driven by digital transformation, according to the lead organizers behind this year’s Global SME Finance Forum 2022 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
More than 350 leaders and senior executives from over 180 banks, Fintech and regulatory agencies physically attended the three- day forum, co-hosted by the National Bank of Cambodia and the International Finance Corporation. More than 60 countries were represented with on-site attendees from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America joined virtually by more than 280 SME financing professionals from around the globe.
Harnessing digitalization for delivering sustainable and inclusive finance for small and medium sized enterprises was the key focus of this conference. Experts, innovators and banking professionals shared the latest trends and best practices leveraging emerging digital technologies. While in Cambodia, participants also had the opportunity to learn about the digitalization journeys of a number of local financial institutions.
The 2022 Global SME Finance Awards winners were also announced during the forum to celebrate the outstanding achievements of financial institutions and fintech companies in delivering exceptional products and services to their SME clients.
Discussions during the three-day conference ranged widely from how to improve the overall landscape to ease funding for the most disenfranchised SME businesses, to how to take advantage of innovative technologies in SME banking to reduce their collective carbon footprint. The talks also revolved around how to overhaul and tailor regulatory frameworks to make sure that new tools deliver positive benefits for SMEs.
“A common thread throughout the forum was the enthusiasm of banking institutions to embrace new ways of thinking and new ways of reaching out to small and medium sized enterprises,” said Matthew CEO of the SME Finance Forum. “Whether its partnering with the growing number of visionary fintech companies or using alternative data to establish the creditworthiness of these enterprises, it was evident the future of inclusive, effective small and medium enterprise banking will be driven by digital transformation.”
About the SME Finance Forum
The SME Finance Forum works to expand access to finance for small and medium businesses. The Forum operates a global membership network that brings together financial institutions, technology companies, and development finance institutions to share knowledge, spur innovation, and promote the growth of SMEs. Established in 2012 by the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion, the SME Finance Forum is managed by IFC. For more information, visit http://www.smefinanceforum.org
Amret Microfinance, Cambodia, NBFI/MFI, a leading microfinance institution and one of the top 10 financial institutions in Cambodia.
Learn from H.E. Dr. Chea Serey, Director General of the National Bank of Cambodia, about women empowerment and women's access to finance in Cambodia.
“We have been working on access to finance particularly for women and committed to reduce exclusion rates by half by 2024…we have come up with a national financial inclusion strategy involving all stakeholders because this is not something that the national bank regulator can do alone.”
The SME Finance Forum’s Leader Dialogues is a series of one-on-one interviews with CEOs, senior executives of financial institutions and technology companies as well as financial sector regulators.
Learn more about National Bank of Cambodia
The National Bank of Cambodia is the central bank of Cambodia. The bank's duties include, inter alia, the management of monetary and exchange policies, the regulation of banks and financial institutions, and the control of the national currency, the riel
ACLEDA Bank Plc. is a public limited company, formed under the Banking and Financial Institutions Law of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Originally, it was founded in January 1993 as a national NGO for micro and small enterprises' development and credit.
The National Bank of Cambodia licensed ACLEDA Bank Limited as a Specialised Bank on October 07, 2000. On December 01, 2003, ACLEDA Bank was once again licensed by the National Bank of Cambodia as a Commercial Bank to enable it to provide full banking services according to the customers' and the market's needs renamed ACLEDA Bank Plc.
What we heard on September 21st….
We kicked off the second day of the Global SME Finance Forum 2022 with Ruth Horowitz - Regional Vice President for Asia and the Pacific, IFC and his Excellency Phan Phalla - Secretary of State for the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Cambodia.
Both Ruth Horowitz and Secretary Phan Phalla spoke about the importance of digitalization in unlocking the potential of SMEs in so many economies. Secretary Phan Phalla spoke about Cambodia’s digital government policy plan (2022 – 2035) in which modernisation of public service delivery plays a big part to offer more concrete support to SMEs. He pointed out that fintech can have a big impact in the sector and the need for collaboration to achieve inclusive socioeconomic development.
They both also highlighted the potential shortcomings, stressing the risk that emerging technologies could deepen inequalities rather than ease them.
The first plenary panel of the day focused on leveraging digital innovations for women entrepreneurs and was moderated by Andrew McCartney – Senior Financial Sector Economist, ADB, joined by Debbie Watkins – CEO and Co-Founder, Lucy, Joyce Tee – Group Head of SME Banking, DBS, Khadija Mariam – Head of Women Entrepreneur Cell, BRAC Bank and Rachel Freeman – Executive Director, Business Development, Tyme.
Panelists shared how digitalization facilitate innovative and effective products and solutions so that more women entrepreneurs become better and more deeply “banked”. Debbie, Joyce, Khadija and Rachel gave us the benefit of their experience and passion for tailoring digital services to women.
Following this panel, we were privileged to be joined by Her Excellency Chea Ratha, Under Secretary of State of the Cambodian Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology & Innovation (MISTI) whose remit includes working to develop resilience, inclusive SME policies, and Building a Strategic Framework to Engage and Empower Women in the Digital Economy.
It was exciting to hear from her about the Cambodian government’s interest in leveling the digital playing field through policy and action. As we know, a supportive and intelligent regulatory ecosystem is important for digitalization to occur at a pace and reach that lifts all boats and not just some.
After those panels, we moved into a breakout session titled credit bureaus leveraging digitalization. We had the pleasure to hear from Joe Bowerbank – Business Development, Creditinfo, Robert Grimberg – CEO, TREFI, Tony Hadley – EVP, Experian and Rajeev Chalisgaonkar (moderator) – Head of Business Banking, Mashreq Bank.
Panelists raised interesting points about how credit bureaus can use new sources of lender’s data as digitization increases their capabilities to create more comprehensive lender profiles.
Tony looked into the future and said that data analytics will grow ever more important. He believes consumer education & financial literacy offer up a lot of opportunities to credit bureaus. Joe also believes that the combing of data sets will bring more opportunities for innovation. This all ratchets up the urgency for proper stewardship of the data. Regulatory frameworks are really important to maintaining trust in any burgeoning consumer centric models and ensure the quality and validity of the data. Rob pointed to progress in Peru in creating the holy grail of invoicing data by preparing to set up an institution through which all credit invoices will flow and to which credit bureaus will eventually have access.
Our first panel of the afternoon tacked achieving and sustaining green finance. It was moderated by Francisco Avendano – Senior Operations Officer, IFC joined by Bruno Laskowsky – Director of Capital Markets and Indirect Credit, BNDES, Edoardo Borsari – Managing Director, Strands, Ivana Tranchini – Country Manager for Cambodia, Visa and Oskar Miel – Managing Partner, Rakuten Capital
The panelists laid out the opportunities of a “Twin Transition”: digitalization that also accelerates a green revolution.
Ivana stated that small businesses are doing their best to deliver value to their customers, and the role of the banks is to come in and facilitate that process.
One way is to partner with each other (banks and fintechs) so that data can be shared, and customers can get a more integrated experience of financial services as a whole.
Typically, when there is a transaction on the fintech’s platform, there’s a collection and movement of data. This data is often very impressive and can offer banks precious insight. Partnerships can also help us track the movement of carbon: from the way it is being produced to when it is being offset.
To Oskar, ESG is still a bit opaque. It’s still unclear what constitutes compliance to ESG values. Oskar spoke of a start-up who partnered with Rakuten called ‘Proof of impact’ that measures the ESG compliance of a company and whose assessments are being taken into consideration by credit providers. One of Rakuten Capital’s most successful loan portfolio is called Upstart. They use a different point of data coming from the social chain of people’s ability to pay and don’t look at the traditional score of the banking agency. This has effectively provided more inclusion and more access to funding.
Francisco flagged up IFC’s efforts to support members’ creation of ESG taxonomies.
He also highlighted the importance of finding technological ways to encourage reduction in the huge losses in water and energy caused by crop spoilage or losses. He wants to see more decarbonisation embedded in products.
“Electricity metric in Brazil is 85% renewable”, stated Bruno. Brazil is a nation with a tremendous opportunity in becoming one of the main actors in the green economy, especially in offshoring carbon credit. Currently, the world produces up to 60 billion tons of CO2 and Europe, the US, and China make up more than 60% of the share while Brazil only takes up 2% of the total carbon emission. However, in terms of the carbon credit reserve, Brazil was said to have taken up a share of 15 to 20%. The financial system in Brazil is extremely strong, efficient, and highly technological. On the other hand, 85% of the credit, especially for SMEs, is run by only 5 banks. Diversification in the credit market is needed in order to foster competition.
Edoardo highlighted that for developing countries to get into green finance, which is highly associated with digitalization and data collection and usage, setting up the foundation is key. The very first step is to build the right infrastructure and get all key players, especially the central banks, to be involved. One good example he raised is the case of Madagascar who wants to develop an analytical solution for providing credits. However, in doing so, they need to have 12 to 18 months of data to make the prediction or analysis. Therefore, an infrastructure that collects and stores data effectively will need to be put in place to enable this technology.
The final panel of the conference revolved around the future of SME payment infrastructure. Panelists H.E. Dr. Chea Serey – Assistant Governor, National Bank of Cambodia, Carrie Suen – Senior Advisor, International Public Policy and Government Affairs, Ant Group, Manu Rajan – Division CEO, Wing Division, Jay Singer – SVP for Global SME Product Development, Mastercard and moderator Matt Gamser - CEO, SME Finance Forum explored an impending payments revolution that could significantly change the landscape for SMEs.
H.E. Dr. Chea Serey explained that registration of SMEs is a good step towards identifying a small business, but it is not enough because it doesn't show the business performance: type of product, export, client, supplier, and sales revenues. If SMEs stay out of the formal system, this kind of data is hard to capture. She stated: “In Cambodia, we promote electronic payment because we want to create some digital footprint for SMEs to help financial institutions better serve them”.
“To encourage people to go into the digital payment space, you must make the digital payment easy. And to make it easy, it has to be cheap, fast and convenient.” In Cambodia, the Bakong technology is the latest generation of mobile payments and baking platform initiated by the National Bank of Cambodia for a peer-to-peer fund transfer service available to retail customers of local banks, financial institutions, and payment service providers in Cambodia.
To increase the level of adoption of digital payment, the two main issues are digital and financial literacy. First, how do we make sure SMEs know what to do with the money they can seek now and second, how do we ensure that the customers trust the sellers and pay the sellers beforehand, so-called “upfront payment”, so that the SMEs can use this as a working capital instead of taking out loans from banks to use as their capital.
H.E. Dr. Chea Serey noted that once digital payment is adopted, the government could work on installing a system that gives access to the business’s operation, through a general ledger that can record all transactions (in particular for tax purposes).
Manu explained that Cambodia is a country with one of the cheapest data (internet) in the world. From his perspective, data connectivity is not the problem in Cambodia for getting people onboard with digital payment.
Carrie introduced AliPay which started in 2004 as a payment function on Alibaba in order to build trust between people when doing online purchases. Currently, Ant Group is focusing on getting SMEs ready for the next space of growth after the pandemic: how to get consumers to increase their transactions successfully and have SMEs engage with customers more directly. Another focus is on building a cross-border solution to bring digital wallet into cross-border. They are currently working with Singapore and looking to bring other countries like Thailand and Malaysia into the system.
Jay explained that businesses don’t only focus on the payment, but the core activities of the business itself. Cards are not the only form of payment. Since payment can be made through other ways such as using crypto currency or e-wallet, Mastercard’s role as a payment method provider is to find ways to integrate these different methods and to allow customers to choose their own payment methods. To create such connected platforms, Mastercard focuses on three main things:
Making sure the platforms are stable: focus on security and trust
Extending into crypto while investing in authentication and tracing fraud.
Finally, to get more people onboard with digital payment, education and capacity building are important tools to reduce the barriers.
Jay concluded “I have talked to some of these small businesses, they don’t care about how businesses operate, or more importantly, they don’t understand all these challenges. Therefore, anything you do, has to be simple, it has to be solving issues so clients can transact, manage their data and information safely and securely, helping them grow their business. Simplicity is the key, education is critical.”
The closing remarks of the Global SME Finance Forum 2022 were given by Piyush Gupta – CEO, DBS
Piyush was not able to join in person but shared his thoughts in this video
Conclusion by Georja Calvin-Smith – Event Emcee
During this year’s conference, we have seen that digitalization can be a powerful tool to improve conditions for SMES of all sorts:
But technology can also exacerbate the very problems it seeks to address, so anticipation and assessment of unintended consequences are important in making sure that digitalization is equitable and that as much as possible, mitigating actions can be taken when and where needed to maximise the positive difference they can make and minimise the harm.
Throughout these conversations we’ve heard calls for banks to do more to walk the walk when it comes to changing their organisational mindsets in investing more in the potential of SMES. That needs new ways of thinking and new ways of reaching out. Also raised was the importance and potential in partnering with the growing number of visionary fin tech companies, in order to get a closer, alternative insight into SMEs data and creditworthiness. Doing so can more easily marry capital to solutions and perhaps even birth more healthily empowered SME offspring.
Overall, though there is almost boundless potential to leverage technology to make impactful human connections.
What we heard on September 20th….
Opening remarks were given by H.E. Chea Chanto – Governor, National Bank of Cambodia and Tomasz Telma – Director, Financial Institutions Group, IFC
Chea Chanto laid out examples of how Cambodia is increasingly leveraging digitalisation to improve access to finance and Tomasz Telma talked about data driven solutions are replacing traditional credit histories or collateral and how SME focused fintech lenders have a big role to play in closing the SME finance gap.
Tomasz said: “Digitalisation and automation make it possible to customize products to the needs of various customer segments and the same technologies make serving high volume low value segments, like SMEs, both less risky and more profitable for financial institutions.”
The opening keynote was given by Michael Schlein – President and CEO, Accion and focused on building an inclusive and resilient digital revolution. Mobile money accounts are having a big impact and there’s an exciting growth in the use of digital tools, but billions are still invisible to the global financial system. Accion is offering some exciting products that will help people join the digital economy, maximise the impact of new tools whilst minimising harm.
The first plenary panel of the day focused on supply chain and gathered Qamar Saleem – Regional Manager Advisory Services, Financial Institutions Group for Asia and Pacific, Gwen Mwaba – Global Head of Trade Finance, Afreximbank, Naveen Subra-maniam – Managing Director, Head of Structured & Trade Export Finance APAC for Intesa Sanpaolo, Philip Herrey – VP, Enterprise Partnerships, Mastercard and Ravi Valecha – CEO, India Factoring.
Qamar stated to open the discussion that: “If you’re going to tackle the SME problem, you have to tackle the supply chain problem”. Gwen addressed the limitations of ESG in Africa. Suggesting that looking at it as SGE would be more appropriate to the realities of doing business on the continent. Africa has contributed less than 4% to the world’s carbon emissions and the focus on environmental risk assessments is not, cannot and should not be approached in the same way as for more developed territories. Ravi spoke about the importance of boosting awareness amongst SMEs of new means of finance and the need for a real cultural change to financing supply chains in order to keep social impact in mind. Phillip raised the limitations of tech and explained that sometimes nothing replaces the impact a sales rep can have in getting customers to understand the options available to them.
Naveen mentioned: ’You don’t always have to wait for the regulatory framework to match available tech. Regulations are an enabler but the market can wait for them to catch up and in the meantime still have legitimate ways to operate”.
The second panel of the day focused on agricultural digitalization with Hans Dellien - Agrifinance Specialist for East Asia and Pacific at IFC, Fifi Rashando – Impact Investment Manager, Good Return, Dr. In Channy – President and Group Managing Director, ACLEDA Bank, Manfred Borer – CEO, Koltiva and Rama Notowidigdo – Co-Founder, Sayurbox.
Fifi spoke about the lack of trust from private banks when it comes to agricultural lending because often, they don’t have an agricultural background. She raised the point of how important it is to banks to consult successful local entrepreneurs when looking at markets that you don’t really understand.
The last discussion panel of the day “Banking on SMEs: Driving Growth and Creating Jobs” was moderated by Hourn Thy – The Head of Operations for the SME Finance Forum at the IFC speaking to Hanh Nam Nguyen – Program Manager, IFC and Syed Abdul Momen – Deputy Managing Director & Head of SME, BRAC Bank.
Hanh Nam Nguyen presented GSMEF, an IFC program funded by UK & NL that encourages IFC’s clients to reach the most underserved SMEs (WSME, VSEs, Climate Smart SMEs, SMEs in remote regions, etc.) by offering clients advisory services, to develop their SME strategy, segmentation, products and solutions targeting SMEs, risk management and incorporating digitization as needed. Blending Donors’ money with IFC’s capital, to provide reduced-cost loans to enable banks to on-lend and providing guarantees to protect banks against potential losses from non-performing loans. Experience shows that expected losses are usually higher than actual indicating that financing SMEs can be profitable for FIs.
GSMEF is expected to have created over 1.2 million jobs. IFC uses the Reach Survey (outstanding balances in lending portfolios, broken down by loan sizes) to obtain feedback on its clients’ lending to SMEs. We recently conducted research, analyzing the last 3 years of our clients’ lending. Our detailed findings are summarized in our most recent Publication, called: Banking on SMEs: Driving Growth, Creating Jobs.
We wrapped up the day in the main room with an impassioned and lighthearted debate entitled “Will Robots replace SME bankers” moderated by our emcee Georja Calvin-Smith who was joined by six panelists: Rajeev Chalisgaonkar - Head of Business Banking, Mashreq Bank, Rachel Freeman - Chief Growth Officer, Tyme, Edoardo Borsari - Managing Director, Strands, Joyce Tee - Managing Director and Group Head of SME Banking, DBS, Arnaud Ventura - Managing Partner, Gojo and Philip Sigwart - CEO, Baobab.
The fourth industrial revolution is transforming banking capabilities across the board. Predictions about what that means in the long term are tough. Big data, AI, Machine learning, and a host of ever evolving emerging digital technologies could make SME finance more efficient and help financiers serve more SMEs faster and hopefully better. However, there are many challenges in the process of adoption.
Robots added value
Rajeev Chalisgaonkar
‘We have to have a little bit more faith in the robots because they can do things… We (bankers) like to think that the clients need us, but they don’t. They need banking. In fact, they don’t even indeed do banking. What they need is the time to run their businesses”
Philip Sigwart
“Every accountant in this world uses some accounting software, but there are more accountants than ever. So, accounting has not disappeared as a profession because there’s accounting software, but it just allows accountants to do their job more efficiently.”
Rachel Freeman
Replacement by technology can sometimes be a better choice because it can offer more flexibility to customers and can also be much more time efficient. A loan can be offered more easily to SMEs (based on the data available at the point of sales machine) and they can cut down their time spent on non-core business activities.
Robot limitations: the human touch
Banks and Robots working together
Arnaud Ventura
“Robots won’t replace bankers any time soon, but the entire financial system will be unrecognisable, money will be replaced, and we will increasingly turn to crypto.
There will be a collaboration between humans and robots. Humans are feeling challenged by robots and are improving their process to be more efficient than robots.”
Joyce Tee
“Despite how advanced technology can be, we believe that humans and robots should be working hand in hand. Bankers are using robots to enable their business, but not to replace them.”
